


I’m Still With You; Oh, Mercy, I Implore

by MellytheHun



Series: Kylux Angst November [7]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Heartbreak, Heavy Angst, I still don't accept Hux's canon name, M/M, One-Sided Attraction, Pining, Tragedy, Tragic Romance, Unrequited Love, Verbal Humiliation, still using my fanon name for him, tumblr event
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-15
Updated: 2016-11-15
Packaged: 2018-08-31 03:30:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8561878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MellytheHun/pseuds/MellytheHun
Summary: Day Fifteen of Angst November: Unrequited





	

**Author's Note:**

> _“Unrequited love does not die; it’s only beaten down to a secret place where it hides, curled and wounded.”–_ Elle Newmark

“Your infantile, _irresponsible_ infatuations have destroyed _decades_ of work within hours, you realize.” 

There was no reason for Snoke to keep them both here for this; Hux had to assume it was part of the punishment, making them both feel unbearably awkward. Snoke was not typically one for theatrics, but the disgrace of exposing something so folly as falling in love clearly called for this black spotlight. Hux has to wonder what Ren is experiencing – being the hyperemotional person he is and so in touch with the emotional realm around him, but Ren has remained entirely silent. Maybe that’s for the best.

“You are alive here now only because your father has assured me that your newer designs outsmart even Starkiller and I will see it done.”

Humiliation it is, then. Salt in the wound. As everything else he’s endured, Hux keeps his eyes forward, his chin high and his brow even.

“Your fixation, juvenile as it is, blinded you to Kylo Ren’s weak foresight and now the droid, the girl and Starkiller are gone,” Snoke sneered, “You bit your tongue in the face of Kylo Ren’s demands not for fear – you’ve never felt so much as an ounce of fear for him. No, you let him stray from your _shared orders_ for the sake of _loving_ him. You are _co-commanders_ , General – you are just as responsible for the fall of Starkiller as Kylo Ren. You were meant to keep him in check as he has kept you. Your shameful lapse into emotion is at the forefront of this failure. You would be wise to shred what remains of that _love_ , or you will find yourself on the more unfortunate end of Kylo Ren’s lightsaber, no matter what engineering genius you offer. Am I understood?”

“Yes, Supreme Leader,” Hux answers hoarsely, unable to look at Ren beside him.

Snoke still looks dissatisfied. He turns his black, unfeeling eyes to Ren and wonders, “you feel his doubt, don’t you?”

“I do.”

Face flushing, Hux wonders if it’d be better that one of them just kill him already. 

_Of course_ he doubts his ability to destroy his love for Ren – it happened all quite by accident, after all and he’d have tugged it out by the roots if he’d spotted it growing at all. Trouble is, he only spotted it once it was in full bloom and spread over him like a moss. If he could have _chosen_ to love anyone in the galaxy, the _last_ person would have been Ren. The Fates had other plans for him, though. 

Genius he may be, but Hux has no idea of how to vanish emotions. He knows how to cloud them, how to tangle them, untangle them, how to rationalize them, how to disguise them and how to compartmentalize them, but erase? He hasn’t the slightest. 

He’s rather sure that what he feels for Ren is an undying thing. That its death won’t even accompany his own; that it will grow until it bursts like the birth of the universe and then when he is ash on the wind, it will linger still. 

It will spread out, beautiful and tragic and unknowable, infinitely. And for every light that reaches its edges, it will expand another thousand years, never ending, never resting. 

But he’s been ordered to kill it. 

He doesn’t see how it’s possible.

So, obviously he doubts. He’s just a man, at the end of the day – just because he doubts does not mean he will fail. He will see to it that his love doesn’t blind him anymore or stand in the way of the Order’s progress, that much he can swear to. That much he knows he can control. 

All else has room for doubt and Hux doesn’t see how anyone might blame him for that. 

“Relieve him of his doubts,” Snoke orders Ren.

Swallowing roughly, it takes a moment for Hux to manage looking at Ren and he hates to find Ren already looking at him. He can feel the force, the weight of Ren’s attention on him and it’s a burden as much as it is thrilling.

He had never wanted his affections exposed, degrading and distressing as they are. If he’d ever meant to expose them, though, it never would have been like this; Snoke announcing it like a blemish on Hux’s uniform, cold and detached.

In sincerity, Hux had imagined it occasionally – what it would be like to tell Ren, to take that leap and offer himself to Ren the way he’s wanted to. He imagined it would be in the privacy of one of their quarters or maybe a cleared conference room or empty corridor. 

He’d visit Ren late at night or grab Ren’s arm before he could leave the room or pull Ren into a hall just cleared of troopers. He’d ask to see Ren’s face and Ren would comply because he wouldn’t know what to expect and he’s like that – Hux doesn’t understand it himself, he just knows Ren follows unlit paths and usually wants to see where an unprecedented situation will bring him. 

He’d step up close to Ren, he’d look Ren sternly in the eye and then kiss Ren. He doesn’t think Ren’s been kissed. There’s something about his lips and eyes – something that begs Hux to curl in closer, to listen more intently, to linger just a bit longer.

And maybe Ren would kiss him back. Maybe Ren’s enormous arms would wind around him and lift him off the bloody ground, maybe Ren would divest Hux of his uniform, eager and thrilling and dangerous as he always is. Maybe Ren would bite and tease and cup his hands around Hux’s neck and face. Maybe – he used to think – maybe, Ren would love him back.

If he ever wanted to expose his affections, that’s how he’d have done it. This is what wrong-footed reality he’s stuck with, however and he supposes that he deserves it.

He’s glad not to see Ren’s face or hear Ren’s natural voice. They’re distractions on good days and now, he feels it’d be more like a disaster to have to face the reality of Ren’s awkward handsomeness and unlikely charm. 

“I’ve never cared for you.”

As if Hux were a bitter, foreign dish forced on a child. Hux thinks absurdly to himself that he’s never cared for strawberries. 

“You’re pale, weak and small,” Ren describes, not pointing, but making some impression that he’s gesturing in Hux’s direction, “I have heard the things they said about you – the predictions your father made. He didn’t foresee your success in the Order, but he wasn’t entirely wrong about you.”

Unpleasant chills run up Hux’s arms and back; that hurts him more than he should allow it to. Ren’s voice is robotic for more than his vocoder and layered on top of it, Hux can hear his father’s resentful tone, playing like a loop in his mind.

_Useless, weak-willed, useless, weak-willed, useless, weak, useless, weak, **weak** , **weak**_ – 

“All that was even remotely admirable about you is up in smoke now. I don’t love you. There should be no shadow of a doubt in you. I don’t love you.”

There’s a distinct nausea settling into Hux’s chest and even as the blade twists in whatever remains of his heart, he’s glad for this. This is good. This is what he needs – degradation, public torture, Ren’s hand curled around the hilt of the blade. All that has ever made him stronger has been horrendously painful and he thinks this will be no different.

Endure the pain now, reap the rewards later.

Imaginative and cruel as he is, Hux would never have been able to dream up how sharp and insistent this pain is, though. He’s never experienced anything like it. He thinks to himself that as one might only experience love this way once in a lifetime for how strong it is, one might only experience the blinding agony of its dismissal once. He savors the pain for that very reason – that it is unique and unlikely to ever be felt again.

“I don’t _love_ ,” Ren insists, as if ‘love,’ were some sport of the imagination played only by children, “Certainly not _you_. I don’t love you, I never have and never will. Never. I trust this will sufficiently… remove any lingering doubts or feelings on your part, General.”

“Doubts,” Hux mutters numbly, far too near to tears.

“About where I stand,” Ren specifies, “I am destined for things greater than your mind is capable of fully comprehending. Even if I did love, I would never be so foolish as to love you and if I were ever foolish enough to love you, I’d never pursue you. You are not nearly so great as what awaits me. Do you understand?”

_Even if he had loved me back, he’d have left me behind…_

“Yes,” Hux answers dispassionately, worried at how that burning agony is still lingering – he has no idea how long it will last.

Perhaps he will feel this burn however long he lives.

Snoke spends more time reprimanding him – the both of them, really, but Hux more than Ren. Hux barely registers it beyond the morbid daydream he has of dying as Han Solo did – at Kylo Ren’s hands, loving him and only wanting a chance to be close to him again. 

The thought leaves a bitter stinging in the back of his throat.

He bites his tongue through the rest of their audience with Snoke and when the holo vanishes, Hux is quick to turn on his heel and leave. His fists are white knuckled under his gloves, his greatcoat isn’t nearly enough to keep him warm and he remembers too much how he laid it over Ren’s body on Starkiller. He remembers how bloody and despondent Ren was and how his heart sank, how Ren looked bewildered in the face of his genuine concern. 

It was a rarity that Hux let his emotions play over his face, but in that moment, he couldn’t help it. He had lost nearly everything. That’s what he’d been thinking in that moment – upon finding Ren. He’d lost _nearly_ everything.

Now, he wonders if it’d been better that he had lost everything.

The back of his eyes are hot and his throat feels tight, his collar is uncomfortable suddenly and he needs to be away in his quarters. He needs the healing companionship of solitude and silence and probably strong alcohol. 

Why would Kylo Ren ever give him the satisfaction of licking his wounds in privacy, though? Who would Kylo Ren be if he didn’t shove his jagged claws into Hux’s aching, open wounds?

“General,” Ren calls out.

Hux doesn’t stop walking, trying to make it clear that he doesn’t feel like furthering this line of conversation, but Ren calls after him again and again.

He turns around abruptly, his pain presenting as fury – he twists, his boots screeching to a spinning halt across the floor only to find Ren a few feet away; he glares at the mask because that’s easy and natural and everything hurts. Of course, this is when Ren decides to remove it. Those dark, glistening, all-seeing eyes fall on Hux and he’s as helpless as he’s ever been. His heart staggering like a wounded newborn fawn in the otherwise empty cavern of his chest. 

“What?” Hux hisses angrily.

Ren has never looked at him like this before; his eyes are curious and while a little reserved, still readable and without malicious intent. He seems very nearly befuddled. It’s aggravatingly endearing.

“You… actually love me?”

Scowling, Hux turns around again to storm away, but Ren’s voice stops him; “no – Hux – I… what does it feel like?”

This gives Hux pause. His fists creak the leather of his gloves and he tugs on his fingers to crackle the knuckles.

“It is all I have ever wanted, entangled in everything I have ever feared. It is undying, unyielding and restless. It keeps me up at night but it lightens my step, it provides me an escape and it soothes my pains as thoroughly and effortlessly as it causes them. I have stared in to dark matter halos, I’ve mastered instruments, read poetry by the greatest minds of all eras, I’ve controlled and I’ve been subdued, I have taken and spared lives and I have never known something more beautiful, moving, indescribable or captivating.”

He turns to look at Ren and Ren looks truly surprised – he’s never really heard Hux speak so much in one go. They’ve known each other several standard years now, but neither has ever bared themselves, not like this. Hux truly has nothing left to lose, though.

He supposes it doesn’t count as a loss if it’s something he never had to begin with.

“Why?”

It’s like talking to a child.

_What else is new?_ Hux jokes darkly to himself; Ren has always been childlike in matters of severity. This is no exception, it would seem. His expression is one like a toddler wondering up at the sky and asking someone why it is the color it is, as if love were as simple as refracted light and rods and cones of human irises. 

“There is no ‘why,’ Ren,” Hux replies coolly, “It just is. It is not something you said or some way you looked at me – I just think of you.”

That hurts to admit for some reason.

Maybe it’s because he admits it with the knowledge that Ren doesn’t think of him at all. 

Ren’s brow creases in more confusion.

“I do,” Hux confesses helplessly, shrugging, “I think of you and I feel it. As surely as my blood will run red if I cut my skin open, I think of you and I feel taken apart and put back together. I feel purpose and drive, want and desperation and contentment all at once. You are troublingly handsome and when you’re not acting like a child, you’re tolerable company. There is no ‘why,’ though. It just is.”

Conceiving of this seems difficult for Ren. His brow is furrowed in contemplation and he nods, despite looking like he understands little to nothing of what Hux has said; fair enough – Hux barely understands what he’s said. 

“When did you know?”

_Why did you not ask this in front of Snoke if you wanted to humiliate me?_

The back of Hux’s mind supplies; _because_ _he doesn’t want to humiliate you. He wants to understand._

He wishes it were easier to hate Ren, but every time he tries to hate the man, his adoration burrows deeper and he’s left wondering why he ever tries at all.

“A long while back,” Hux answers, clasping his wrists over the small of his back and standing a little straighter, as if delivering a progress report, “I was on the bridge and you had just returned from some planet-side journey. You stood beside me at the viewport and asked why –“

“Why nebulae are different colors,” Ren finishes, seeming to recall that moment now with clarity and newfound reverence. 

Hux nods, “yes. You stood next to me for several hours and it was… when you left, I knew. You left to go to your quarters and I had never felt more lonely or satisfied in all my life. I had felt myself slipping, but I’d thought it was a simple, passing infatuation. That moment, though… I knew it was not anything simple and that it was not something that would come to pass.”

There are a few beats of heavy silence and Hux wonders what it is that’s going through Ren’s mind. He seems troubled, grasping for comprehension and there’s something hopeful about the glimmer in his eyes. 

There’s something painfully regretful there as well, though.

“You actually love me?”

“Unfortunately, quite inarguably and enduringly, yes.”

Ren stares at him like he might be some yet uncategorized creature; his eyes are pained and devoid of understanding and Hux has no idea who he feels more pity for.

Something hopeful stirs in Hux’s chest – wondering what Ren might say to that. Perhaps Ren is the type of man to honor something so committed even if he doesn’t fully understand it. 

“You can become stronger,” Ren offers abruptly, “Without this weighing you down –“

“Right,” Hux nods again, looking up and away to cool the wet heat gathering at the surface of his eyes, “Right. Yes. That’s fine, Ren.”

“You really could be, Hux. It’s useless – love has been the demise of men stronger and wiser than you –“

“Yes, are we done here?” Hux asks coldly, already turning around, desperate to get away from everything Kylo Ren is and does and says and feels.

“I once thought you were above this. I thought you were better.”

The sincerity in Ren’s voice hurts more profoundly than his original rejection and Hux shakes his head, sniffing a touch too loudly, setting his glassy eyes determinedly forward. He knows now.

He knows this burning pain is as undying as his love and while he can ignore both, he will feel them until the end of his days. He knows this in his bones, in the very marrow coated within – he will bleed red when cut and he will love Kylo Ren in silent agony until he is released to oblivion.

“General Hux?” Phasma’s voice inquires through his comm, “You’re needed at the control bridge.”

“Right away,” Hux answers patiently.

He remains standing, entirely still for a moment, wondering what exactly Ren’s face looks like right now and whether or not he should turn around and kiss Ren and then allow Ren or Snoke to kill him however they see fit. Maybe it will be worth it – to feel it. Just once.

He’s wiser than that, though and to prove it, he walks away without looking back. He feels Ren’s powerful eyes on his back as he leaves and he pretends for a moment that he was the one to reject Ren. That Ren’s dense emotion is heavy in the air because Hux has just broken his heart to smithereens and not the other way around. That Ren’s energy is suffocating the hall because Hux is the one who feels nothing.

_Do you lie to yourself often?_

Head tilted back, Hux laughs bitterly, worshipping the sound of Ren’s deep voice in his mind all while despising it and wishing Ren would leave him be.

_Only when it comes to you._


End file.
